StatesPunjab
Sunil Jakhar asks Amit Shah for NIA and ED probes into Punjab's prison drug trade
In a letter after the Mansa killing of activist Parvinder Singh Jhota, the BJP leader said the AAP government had reinstated a drug inspector caught with crores in cash and deposits.
Key points
- Jakhar wants the NIA to probe drug networks run from Punjab's prisons.
- He asked for an ED probe into the black money behind the trade.
- Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini said AAP had 'completely failed' on drugs.
BJP leader Sunil Jakhar on Saturday wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah asking for the National Investigation Agency to look into drug operations he said were being run from Punjab’s prisons, and for the Enforcement Directorate to trace the black money behind them.
The letter follows the killing on Tuesday of Parvinder Singh Jhota, an anti-drug activist who was shot inside a medical store in a crowded Mansa market after he questioned the owner about selling addictive drugs to an elderly man. The store owner, Ashwani Kumar, was taken into custody in Salasar, Rajasthan.
The drug inspector case
Jakhar pointed to a drug inspector once posted in Mansa who was arrested in 2024. Police then found ₹7.09 crore in 24 bank accounts, two bank lockers, ₹1.49 crore in cash, 260 grams of gold, foreign currency and property worth ₹2.40 crore, he wrote. He said the state police chief had called the inspector a kingpin of a prison-based gang.
The state government neither sought an NIA probe nor referred the case to the ED, Jakhar said. Instead, after the inspector got bail, “the Aam Aadmi Party government not only reinstated him but also appointed him” to a post at his department’s headquarters. Jakhar said the inspector had become a source of “illicit income” for the government and called for action against “drug trade operating from prisons under government patronage.”
Saini joins in
Earlier on Saturday, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini told reporters in Chandigarh that AAP had promised to end Punjab’s drug problem in three to six months but had “completely failed”. He called Jhota’s killing a serious and sensitive matter and said the activist had repeatedly warned the authorities.
“But the government did nothing. It indulged in corruption only. People are fed up with it,” Saini said.
The killing has set off a political row in Punjab, which goes to the polls early next year. The state government did not respond publicly to Jakhar’s letter on Saturday.